Tag Archives: Relationships

We live in a winner’s world. It belongs to those who triumph and overcome. Survival of the fittest often means that he who claws the deepest gets and he who doesn’t, doesn’t.

JM came home after working the Superbowl (for those of you who are newer to the blog, my husband is a production designer) and was telling me about what it was like standing in the tunnel as the Patriots came off the field after losing to the New York Giants.

…They were so young, and they just looked, you know, devastated. It sucks that so often when someone wins, someone elses dream is dying, right there, in slow motion.

Defeat is hard to stomach, but winning can be deceiving. I ran across this quote from Rilke in a post on Elephant Journal and thought it made for a nice Sunday morning inspiration.

Winning does not tempt that man

For this is how he grows: By being defeated, decisively,

By constantly greater things.

~ Rilke

You may not be growing if you haven’t been at least a little uncomfortable anytime in your recent memory. Just a thought.

I talk about Pema Chodron so much on the blog that I thought you might like to see her sweet face!

When will we move from loathing to love? Like everything else, when we get sick and tired of it.

Let’s do it now, because it’s literally that simple. Decide. And then act.

Pema says that all addiction stems from the place where we meet our edge and just can’t stand it. Healing is the warrior’s journey. And it’s not necessarily what you might think…picking up a sword (or an AK-47) and doing physical battle. The minute we draw a line in the sand and say, enough is enough, I’m not running (from myself, my feelings, my past or others) we can immediately start having a different experience. It’s hard to say that, isn’t it? Especially I think, when we’re new, and we have a lot in the closet. Not to run means opening that door and facing whatever might be on the other side of it. annihilation! But of course, how else can we find what is indestructible within us?

Physical sobriety is the beginning of healing, because it is the place from which our frozen insides can thaw. The good news about sobriety is that you get your feelings back. The bad news about sobriety is that you get your feelings back. And you’re going to feel a lot of things. Actually, it’s all good news. Because as Pema says:

“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear…are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck.”

If you go to the (metaphorical) closet and pull out that piece of yesterday (regret, sadness, loneliness, hate, anger, fear, confusion) and you can put it in front of you on the floor and sit there with it, even if you sit there for 17 seconds before you stuff it back in the closet, that is the journey. If you practice each day this way, the 17 seconds will become a minute, will become 7 minutes…and so on. What is the point of looking at it there on the floor?

The point is to observe it (yourself and others) without judgement. There is no fixing required–I find that a tremendous relief! Things aren’t fixed. They are coming together. They are falling apart. That is life. Karma is not some retribution where something terrible happens to you and you’ve somehow paid off a debt from your past sins. Karma is the steady rhythm of the universe that keeps bringing you the experiences you need in order to grow (and heal!) Sit. Stay. Heal.